Motorist's window smashed in wild act of road rage

Peter Hardwick
Reporter
Peter started in 1976 as apprentice typesetter/comp and has 32 years with The Chronicle in three stints (in between working/holidays in UK/Europe, Brisbane and Melbourne). Entered editorial from comp room in 1996.

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A ROAD rage incident within a stone's throw of the Toowoomba police station has proved expensive for disability pensioner Matthew James McClelland.

The 39-year-old was in a car following another vehicle on Hume St on July 29 last year, the city's Magistrates Court was told.

As the complainant driver pulled up at the intersection of Hume and Margaret Sts, McClelland's car pulled alongside tooting the horn, police prosecutor Sergeant Tony Costa told the court.

The victim driver looked across to see two people giving "the bird" before McClelland got out of the vehicle, walked over to the complainant's car and smashed a window.

He then walked back to his vehicle and the pair drove off laughing, Sgt Costa said.

The complainant went to the police station and identified McClelland by a police photo board, the court heard.

McClelland pleaded guilty to a charge of wilful damage arising from that incident as well as to having one gram of marijuana and a barbecue sauce bottled fashioned into a pipe to smoke it at his residence on October 30 last year and to a charge of contravening a police direction.

His solicitor Phil Stainton told the court his client had been free of "serious trouble" since 2009 and had since been diagnosed with schizophrenia.

Magistrate Graham Lee noted McClelland had six pages of criminal history and ordered he do 60 hours community service, pay restitution of $640 for the window he smashed and fined him a further $250.